A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown

In A Thousand Lives, the New York Times best-selling memoirist Julia Scheeres traces the fates of five individuals who followed Jim Jones to South America as they struggled to first build their paradise, and then survive it. Each went for different reasons - some were drawn to Jones for his progressive attitudes towards racial equality, others were dazzled by his claims to be a faith healer. But once in Guyana, Jones' drug addiction, mental decay, and sexual depredations quickly eroded the idealistic community.

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

You've likely heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Perhaps you've seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of the recent Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later.

3,096 Days in Captivity: The True Story of My Abduction, Eight Years of Enslavement, and Escape

On March 2, 1998, 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped and found herself locked in a house that would be her home for the next eight years. She was starved, beaten, treated as a slave, and forced to work for her deranged captor. But she never forgot who she was, and she never gave up hope of returning to the world. This is her story.

One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway - and Its Aftermath

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then proceeded to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 more, most of them teenage members of Norway's governing Labour Party. In One of Us, the journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day and what led up to it. What made Breivik, a gifted child from an affluent neighborhood in Oslo, become a terrorist?

Michelle in New York City says:"A Thoroughly Researched and though provoking Book"

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

Ruth Wariner was the 39th of her father's 42 children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turned a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can ascend to heaven only by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible.

Too Pretty to Live: The Catfishing Murders of East Tennessee

When Bill Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth began their romance, they unknowingly set in motion a diabolical plot that would end with them murdered in their own home, Hayworth holding their mercifully unharmed infant. Chris was a CIA agent who was concerned about Jenelle. Seeing the cyberbullying she had endured, and worried for her safety, Chris got in touch with Jenelle's protective parents and her devoted boyfriend, warning them that Payne and Hayworth were a danger to Jenelle.

Always seeking to be an obedient Priesthood girl, in her teens Rebecca Musser became the nineteenth wife of her people's prophet: 85-year-old Rulon Jeffs. Finally sickened by the abuse she suffered and saw around her, she pulled off a daring escape and sought to build a new life and family.

House of Horrors: The Shocking True Story of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland Strangler

To his neighbors, Anthony Sowell was a friendly and helpful former Marine. But they didn't know about his dark side - or the gruesome secret inside his house. Sowell's secret life was revealed to the nation on October 29, 2009, when a Cleveland Police SWAT team entered his house to arrest him for an alleged rape. They didn't find Sowell, but they encountered a nightmarish scene: two decomposed bodies in his third-floor living room. Eight more bodies were hidden throughout the house and buried in the back yard.

Church of Lies

"My name is Flora Jessop. I've been called apostate, vigilante, and crazy bitch, and maybe I am. But some people call me a hero, and I'd like to think they're right too. If I am a hero, maybe it's because every time I can play a part in saving a child or a woman from a life of servitude and degradation, I'm saving a little piece of me, too. was one of twenty-eight children born to my dad and his three wives."

The Kuřim Case: A Terrifying True Story of Child Abuse, Cults & Cannibalism

In May of 2007, in a small, quiet town in the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic, a technical glitch - a simple, accidental crossing of signals - revealed a terrible case of child abuse, and an entire nation watched transfixed with horror as the grisly extent of the perversion of the maternal instinct was revealed. Two small brothers named Jakub and Ondrej, nine and seven years old respectively, were revealed to have suffered confinement, mutilation, psychological brutality, and cannibalism at the hands of several people.

Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength

In 1979 Liz Pryor is a 17-year-old girl from a good family in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Halfway through her senior year of high school, she discovers that she is pregnant - a fact her parents are determined to keep a secret from her friends, siblings, and community forever. One snowy January day, after driving across three states, her mother drops her off at what Liz thinks is a Catholic home for unwed mothers - but which is, in truth, a locked government-run facility for delinquent and impoverished pregnant teenage girls.

My Sweet Angel: The True Story of Lacey Spears, the Seemingly Perfect Mother Who Murdered Her Son in Cold Blood

Lacey Spears made international headlines in January 2015, when she was charged with the "depraved mind" murder of her five-year-old son, Garnett. Prosecutors alleged that the 27-year-old mother had poisoned him with high concentrations of salt through his stomach tube. To the outside world, Lacey had seemed like the perfect mother, regularly posting dramatic updates on her son's harrowing medical problems. But in reality, Lacey was a textbook case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

The Unbreakable Child

The Unbreakable Child, a story about forgiving the unforgivable, is a riveting journey inside the secretive underbelly of the St. Thomas / St. Vincent Orphan Asylum in rural Kentucky. It is the first book in the United States to confront the institutionalized physical and emotional abuse suffered by countless orphans at the hands of Catholic clergy over these last decades.

Straight Pepper Diet: A Memoir

Joseph W. Naus was living the American dream. He'd survived a brutal childhood, graduated from Pepperdine Law School, and become a successful attorney. Then one night his American dream life became a nightmare when his sex and alcohol addictions collided and exploded. "On Tuesday I was a respected civil trial lawyer making six-figures. On Wednesday I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed, charged with attempted murder...and then it got worse."

Salt of the Earth

Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his 12-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied. Tips and sightings poured in as lawmen and volunteers combed the Cascades forest.

Rough Trade: A Shocking True Story of Prostitution, Murder, and Redemption

Early one morning in May, 1997, a young couple in the mountains of Colorado spotted a man dragging a body up a secluded trail. The man fled, leaving behind a bloody, dying woman. The investigation into the death of young street-walker Anita Paley would lead from that idyllic spot to the seamy underbelly of Denver and a world of prostitution, drug dealers, and violent criminals. And it would expose the lives of suspect Robert Riggan and Anita's friend Joanne Cordova, a former cop-turned-crack-addict and hooker.

Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige, was raised as a Scientologist but left the controversial religion in 2005. In Beyond Belief, she shares her true story of life inside the upper ranks of the sect, details her experiences as a member Sea Org - the church's highest ministry - speaks of her "disconnection" from family outside of the organization, and tells the story of her ultimate escape.

Daddy's Little Secret: A Daughter's Quest to Solve Her Father's Brutal Murder is a poignant true crime story about a daughter who, upon her father's murder, learns of his alternative lifestyle. She had looked the other way about other secrets of his as well - deadly secrets that could help his killer escape the death penalty, should she come forward. An inside look at the complex and fascinating psyche of a father who shared an uncommon bond with his daughter.

Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer

While serving a life sentence for the murder of a young girl, Jack Unterweger wrote seven books, saw his critically acclaimed autobiography made into a film, and became a cause celebre among influential Austrian literati who successfully campaigned for his release. Riding high on the fame, he arrived in Los Angeles where he nurtured his career as a journalist. Then, one by one, Hollywood prostitutes started turning up dead. Unterweger covered the story. There was a reason why his reporting of the crimes seemed so vivid.

Mother's Day

In June of I985, while her teenage sons held their half sister down, Theresa Cross beat her I9-year-old daughter, Sheila, unconscious and then stuffed her into a 2' x 2' storage locker. After three days, the knocking, kicking, and cries stopped. Theresa and her sons dumped the girl's body in the desolate High Sierras....

Buried Memories: Katie Beers' Story

In 1992, nine-year-old Katie Beers was kidnapped by a family friend and locked in an underground box for 17 days. Katie has now come forward to tell the story that created a national media storm as reporters uncovered the truth about her prekidnapping life of neglect and sexual abuse and the details of her rescue. She shares how this experience and the recent death of her kidnapper, John Esposito, has affected her life.

All but Normal: Life on Victory Road: A Memoir

After waking from a coma following a car crash, Beverly Thornton's once sweet and gentle disposition had been replaced by violent mood swings, profanity-laced tirades, and uncontrollable fits of rage. Inside the Thornton house, floors and countertops were piled high with dirty laundry and garbage because Bev was unable to move well enough to clean. Dinners were a Russian roulette of half-cooked meat, spoiled milk, and foods well past their expiration dates.

Precious Victims: Penguin True Crime

The police in Jersey County, Illinois, accepted Paula Sims' story of a masked kidnapper who snatched her baby girl, Lorelei, from her bassinet. Three years later, her second newborn daughter suffered an identical fate - and this time the police were unable to stop searching until they had discovered the whole horrifying truth. This is the full terrifying story of twisted sexuality and hate seething below the surface of a seemingly normal family and of the massive investigation and nerve-shattering trial that made the unthinkable a reality.

Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town

This true story was the basis for the Broadway play, The Runner Stumbles, and the movie of the same name. In 1907, a Felician nun disappeared from her rural convent. When her bones were found buried in the dirt-floored basement of the remote, Gothic church she served, it caused a national sensation. Who killed her? The handsome priest? The jealous housekeeper? And, what other secret was uncovered along with her bones?

Publisher's Summary

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen-years-old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribea religious reform school in the Dominican Republicis characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.

What the Critics Say

“Like the best writers, Scheeres offers her characters in the fullness of the contradictions they hold in tension, and with great and clear-sighted empathy, and at the end of the audiobook, the listener might say: They’re so much like me.” (Salon.com)

I'm Audible's first Editor-at-Large, the host of In Bed with Susie Bright -- and a longtime author, editor, journo, and bookworm. I listen to audio when I'm cooking, playing cards, knitting, going to bed, waking up, driving, and putting other people's kids to bed! My favorite audiobooks, ever, are: "True Grit" and "The Dog of the South."

Sheeres shares jaw-dropping stories from her childhood in the mid-1980s when her Bible-obsessed parents moved their family to Indiana. Her two adopted brothers, both African-American, faced cruelty and racism in and outside the home, a 15-acre farm where the children were little more than slaves.

Christian radio served as an alarm clock at six o'clock in the morning. Spy speakers were installed around the house so that all their conversations could be heard by the mother. The violent father, whose favorite biblical injunction was "spare the rod, spoil the child" beat the sons countless times and left permanent scars.

Eventually, Sheeres and her younger brother were sent away to an over-the-top Christian boot camp in Latin America that takes a "by-any-means-necessary" approach to getting repentance from the students. You can't help but wonder if the kids are going to be killed.

What made the experience of listening to Jesus Land the most enjoyable?

I thought the reader got the essence of the author and I forgot that I wasn't listening to a young woman telling her own story. The story of conservative religion affecting young teenagers mixed with racial intolerance tell the story of our similiar South African experience with that era.

I found Julia's candidness regarding her own personal journey most affecting as well as the relationship with her brother, David. There were moments when I groaned aloud at the abuses that happened to both of them.

I could not stop listening.

What did you like best about this story?

I loved the similarity to my own growing up in a racially intolerant society - one that didn't understand teenagers at all and spent no time in changing that attitude.

What does Elizabeth Evans bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She afforded the mother a sharp, intolerant voice that I may not have been as affected by. She brought Julia to life through her complimenting the excitement, or sadness with her tone of voice.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

There were many because she took me back to me being a teenager. I think that every time the love that Julia had for David was related, it reminded me of the relationships that one has with one's siblings in an environment when children are trying to survive - when on the outside everything looks perfect.

Any additional comments?

I have just bought her other book. Julia fascinated me so much with her amazing resilience and her love for her brother.

What made the experience of listening to Jesus Land the most enjoyable?

This book was not enjoyable in the sense that it was happy, hopeful, or even primarily redemptive. In fact, many passages of this book made me angry - not at the author, but at her parents (her father's abuse and her mother's cold indifference and hypocrisy)... and then to add reform "school" on top? This is not the Jesus I know... any of it!

I have to include the black v. white race issue here, as it was prominently displayed in the book. I honestly challenge anyone to find where in the Bible it says that black people are inferior, as for some reason that seemed to be the prevailing belief in conservative America...

What other book might you compare Jesus Land to and why?

I read this book on the heels of reading Lauren Drain's "Banished - surviving my years in the Westboro Baptist Church". There are many parallels, and yet these two women have come out completely different - one a secular humanist with no need for religion; the other still seeking answers and believing that there is a God of love out there..

Which character – as performed by Elizabeth Evans – was your favorite?

Elizabeth Evans was incredible as a narrator for this book. She infused so much of the teen angst, pain and frustration that Julia must have felt... I felt like a young Julia Scheeres was telling me her story.

Any additional comments?

As stated above, many parts of this book made me angry. It is a cautionary expression of the Biblical words for parents not to grieve their children. It causes me to reflect on how I plan to raise my own children as a Christian. They will need so much more than just food and shelter - they will need love and affection, something notably absent from Julia's parents.

This book is not representative of all Christians, or Christ Himself. I personally believe that one can be a strong believer in Christ and neither hold so many convictions as to stomp out compassion and grace nor so few as to be ineffective. Christ - as portrayed in the Bible - is not a brutal task master nor a spineless sissy.

I applaud Julia Scheeres for writing this brutally honest book and Elizabeth Evans for perfectly narrating it.

The relationship between the narrator and her adopted black brother is shown through the years. The hypocrisy of her religious parents and the racism in her Indiana hometown were touched upon. I learned a bit about the experience of being a white girl and having black brothers.

The final chapter was worth listening to: a touching section that showed how much she loved her one brother.

However, most of the book was full of overwrought descriptions of the mundane. I fast forwarded through many sections. Heavy use of adjectives that often felt off and many descriptions felt contrived.

The narrator made this story seem harsher than it may be in print. The dialogue was read in irritating "religious" voices that made the content seem like hyperbole. Everyone was an enemy except for her brother and that made the chapters hard to trudge through.

I grew up in rural Illinois the same time as Julia Scheeres grew up in rural Indiana. Her memories reflect so many of my own in regards to racism, religion and the constant peer pressure. I felt as though I was on her journey with her as she traversed heartbreak at the hands of her own family and prejudice at every turn.

What other book might you compare Jesus Land to and why?

I don't think there is any book that compares to this one - this is such a personal story.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favorite scene is when Julia Scheers returns to Escuela Caribe and offers the advice "trust no one."

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I wanted to desperately finish this book in one sitting because it was so good. I wanted to know that Julia Scheers somehow found happiness and that David found the true meaning of family.

Any additional comments?

This memoir is truly moving. It is so heartbreaking and honest, I want to thank Julia Scheers for finding the strength to write it.

I love and appreciate the honesty in this book. It was brave of Julia to share such detail about her life and family that has shaped her as a child and young adult. This book will make you cringe, cry and laugh and ultimately want to give Julia a long embrace.